Lost in France

Thursday 20^th July

On Tuesday saw a single deer leave the sweetcorn and bound up the bank! Seems like it’s a deer thoroughfare. The heat is ramping up again, 38 degrees according to the thermometer in St George in the afternoon. We bought what we wanted at Madam’s little shop but decided it was too hot to walk around so we headed straight back home – and enjoyed the car’s air conditioning! It was cloudy all day and so hot we slept downstairs in the mill room that night. A violent thunderstorm woke me, and I watched the sheet lightning through the glass doors.

Wednesday night it got cooler after six, so we slept back upstairs and left the windows open. (We’ve tried all tactics – windows open, windows shut, shutters closed and windows open, everything at half-mast but nothing is ideal. It stays uncomfortably hot until about three in the morning and then the temperature plummets to about 16 degrees. That’s when I wake up feeling cold. In the morning we count our insect bites. I’ve been thinking of a mosquito net over the bed, but there’s nowhere to hang it. Perhaps more garlic is the answer!

Friday 21^st July

Lamonzie Montastruc

A lazy morning and down to Lalinde in time for a longer walk by the canal – yes, it is a canal – le canal du Lalinde and then into the square for lunch. Bill ordered bavette, which turned out to be Charolais steak and I order the mushroom omelette. Both turned up with not chips but sliced potatoes with their skins on, curled up and slightly brown. Like chips, but not chips. Not fried. We think they must have been done in an oven, and will experiment when we get home. Tim liked them. Eight euros cheaper, even with the beer, than the other café we tried last week. On the plus side they brought water for Tim, but none for us. Today we received chilled water in a thermos bottle, but not for Tim, so we gave him water in a clean ash tray. We felt the first few drops of rain as we walked back to the car, and raced the black clouds all the way home.

The journey was longer than anticipated because instead of following the sat nav we disagreed with it and took the route we knew. Fine. But then Bill pointed to a sign for Banueil and said Shall we go that way? In the split second of decision time I said why not. Big mistake. We saw a few pretty villages, some old, one very modern, but ended up back in Lalinde. Well, no, not quite. We came out on the Porte de Cruz on the canal and had to drive nearly all the way to Bergerac before we were reasonably sure that a right turn would take us home. We ended up joining the D21 at Lamonzie. From there, a straight run home, a quick walk with Tim and then we got in and hunkered down, because the rain came down. Real rain.

On the Dordogne

Thunder and lightning, too. I went and had a nap.